Thursday, December 17, 2015

Cheap Trick guitarist Rick Neilsen says he was speechless when he heard the Rockville, IL band were among the artists to be inducted into the 2016 Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

"Usually I'm a man of many words, but this has got me in a tizzy here," Neilsen tells Rolling Stone. "I'm verklempt. I don't know what to say. It's very exciting."

Cheap Trick will enter the Hall alongside Deep Purple, Steve Miller, Chicago and N.W.A. The group have been eligible for entry since 2003 and the 2016 nod marks their first nomination.

“I was prepared to not get it and say, ‘Oh, well, better luck next time," says the guitarist. “When I was with Dave Clark, he told me all about what happened with him and how Tom Hanks inducted them. He said, ‘I voted for you five times.’ That was pretty funny. A bunch of other people told me they voted for us, like Little Steven. I find out now I had more friends than I thought I did.”

The band’s principal lineup of Neilsen, vocalist Robin Zander, bassist Tom Petersson and drummer Bun E. Carlos will enter the Hall, while Carlos was removed from the touring lineup in 2010 and replaced by Neilsen’s son Daxx.

“I'm sure he'll be invited,” explains Neilsen. “My son Daxx has been playing with us for the last five years, but this is all about our history and, the way I look it, our future. We're Cheap Trick. We're too dumb to quit. We're still out there slogging it out.”

Asked if Carlos might join the group to perform at New York’s Barclays Center on April 8, he says “I don't know. Why not? Here's a true story. When we got signed originally to Epic in 1976, Bun had broken his arm and we had two drummers. We were signed with two drummers. Bun E. had his arm in a sling and there was Hank Ransome.

“We got signed as a five-piece band. It was funny because Columbia had come to see us, and the night they came, Bun fell and broke his arm. The night they signed us we had two drummers, so why not have two drummers? How about that?”